REVIEW OF MR. GAMBLE'S BOOK.
By W. M. Healey
I HAVE just finished reading the book entitled, “Sunday the True Sabbath of God,” by Samuel Walter Gamble. As I contemplate the work as a whole, I am forcibly impressed with its spirit of bitterness, which is manifest from the introduction to the finish. This alone shows the character of the book, and that it is not from above, but from beneath. “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” 1 John 4:1. This book attacks, especially, the Seventh-day Adventists. C. H. Fowler, in his introduction, accuses them of “giving way to the natural waywardness of the unregenerate heart, in robbing man of two-fifths of his natural expectation of life by taking away his divinely appointed day of rest, and increasing the power of temptation to the use of alcoholic stimulants to make up for lost rest.” On page 133 I read: “They are helping to drive to death, drink, and hell, hundreds of laboring men a week.” Again: “I feel assured that probably a half-dozen leaders among them will stoop to almost anything in order to carry their point.”—Page 134. On page 8 they are called “one of the greatest curses to the progress of Christianity.” These and other like statements need no other refutation than the teachings and practise of the people against whom they are made; but they reflect sadly on those who make them, and clearly show the spirit and character of their work. It is well known that these people, the Adventists, are among the leading temperance-people of the world, and the strongest advocates for granting perfect liberty to all in keeping or not keeping any day, so far as human authority is concerned. Why, then, should such statements be made? It is sad indeed when professed teachers of the Gospel of Christ seem so indifferent to the truth in their arguments and charges. The last words on the first page of the introduction tell the whole story; they are, “It is this or nothing.” When Christ was on earth, the enemies of His work accused Him of causing people to break the Sabbath. Matt. 12:1–5. They also said, “Behold a Man gluttonous and a wine-bibber.” Matt. 11:19. These charges were false, but it was “this or nothing.” Observe the same charges were made against Jesus that are now made against those who are attacked by this book. Jesus said: “The servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.” John 15:20. If they would manifest such a spirit of persecution and hatred, and make such false charges against Christ, what can His disciples expect? If justice was denied a faultless one, we need not expect it to be shown toward His followers, who by nature are not perfect. But it is from the opposers of Jesus Christ that all these5persecutions come, and all these false charges are from darkness, and not light. If it is true, as this writer claims, that when people hear the arguments of these people, and do not obey them, they lose faith in Sunday and in their former teachers, give up their Christian profession, and by “hundreds a week” go into drunkenness and down to destruction, then without intending to do so he makes the strongest admission that the work he is opposing is the work of God; for if to reject is death, to accept is life. Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit. 1 Cor. 12:9. And God never withdraws His Spirit because error has been rejected, but because of the rejection of truth. If one should hear heathen doctrines, and turn away from them, it would not cause him to lose his faith in God and in His Word and saving grace; it would not send him to drunkenness and death. Then what advocate of the Adventist faith ever made a stronger claim or better argument in its favor, than this author does when he says that those who reject its teachings go to death and ruin? God’s Spirit is the spirit of truth, and is withdrawn when truth is rejected. It is ever so with the Gospel of Christ. To hear and reject is death; to hear and accept is life. Is this the fault of the Gospel? Is Christ to be blamed for the loss that comes to those who reject Him?—No, indeed. Neither are the Adventists to blame for the souls that lose their “rest-day,” “their faith,” and go to ruin because they reject what Adventists teach. In acceptance they would find rest, peace, faith, and life. A fearful responsibility rests on those who teach them to reject; to them come loss and wo. “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.” Matt. 5:19. May the author under consideration, by the light of his own admission, see the error he is in. Truly it may be said, as was said of old, “Their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.” Deut. 32:31. We might safely stop here our investigation of this work, the author having proved himself that his book is against the salvation of souls. But it may be well to examine some of the particular errors of the book. It admits that the Sabbath was given at the creation of the world, but claims that it was the same day of the week as our Sunday. This day the author thinks was observed for about eighteen hundred years, and then lost. He says the Israelites, while slaves in Egypt, kept the Egyptian Sabbath, Friday; but if one reads the account of their cruel bondage, he will scarcely conclude that the Egyptians gave them much time for Sabbath-keeping. One of Pharaoh’s complaints was that they were idle, and that Moses was the cause of their idleness. Doubtless this was true, as he taught them to stop work on the Sabbath. At Sinai God gave the children of Israel annual sabbaths, which came on certain days of the month, and were to keep in memory events connected with their deliverance from Egypt. But contrary to Mr. Gamble, they had the weekly Sabbath before they reached Sinai. In Ex. 16:22–30 is given an account of some who broke the Sabbath, and it is said that that Sabbath was the seventh day. And it was not an Egyptian Sabbath; for verse 28 reads: “And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep My commandments and My laws”—not Egyptian commandments, but “My commandments.” We are told in verse one that this was a month after the Israelites left Egypt. From ch. 19:1 we learn that on the third month and “same day” (that is, the same day of the month on which the people left Egypt) they reached the Wilderness of Sinai. Then Moses conversed with the Lord, and the people were given three days to prepare, before the law was spoken from Sinai. This shows that they had a knowledge of the seventh-day Sabbath, and were expected to keep it, before it was given from Sinai, and several hundred years after Mr. Gamble says it was lost. About half of Mr. Gamble’s book is devoted to a discussion of the annual sabbaths, and showing, by the aid of a chart, that these sabbaths, being fixed to a certain day of the month, could not always come on the same day of the week. This conclusion was quite generally known long before the author “discovered” it, as he claims to have done. It rests on the simple fact that the days in a year or month are not divisible by the number of days in a week without a remainder. All this has no bearing on the question of a weekly Sabbath, and thus one half of the book may be set aside as wholly irrelevant. Its only use is to cause some to think the author has something, because he pays so much attention to it. If one stops and peers thru a crack in a wall, the passer-by will stop and look; and tho he moves on and sees nothing, he will think there must have been something there, or the other person would not continue looking. A list of these sabbaths, which came only once in a year, is given in Leviticus 23; and they are “beside the Sabbaths of the Lord.” Verse 38. The author tries to connect man’s reckoning of first day with God’s reckoning of seventh day by saying that Adam’s first day was God’s seventh day. Of course Adam was created on the sixth day; but he says Adam did not see all that day, therefore he counts the seventh as his first day. According to this argument, if a child did not see all of the day on which it was born—and it probably would not—the next day would be its birthday. The same Sabbath that was given in Eden was again mentioned and spoken by the Lord from Sinai. Ex. 20:8–11. Mr. Gamble is obliged to admit this, and then to save himself he says that the Decalog given there was not for the Israelites, but for the patriarchs. Think of it! for three days the people had been in great expectation, waiting to hear God speak to them. They are gathered at the mount, over which a heavy cloud rests. Suddenly there bursts upon the ear the loud, long blast of a trumpet; the mountain reels to and fro, and emits fire and smoke; the thunder rolls thru the heavens, peal after peal; above all, the voice of God is heard speaking the Ten Commandments. The people are afraid, and say to Moses, “Let not God speak with us, lest we die.” If Mr. Gamble had been there with his “discovery,” he might have said of the Decalog of Exodus 20, God’s spoken words, “The Lord is not giving this to you; this is for the patriarchs, who are dead”! If a man were to admit in court to-day that he had violated a law, and that the law in question was the last act of the last legislature of that State, and then plead, “May it please the court, this law was not made for us; it was for Christopher Columbus and those who lived in his time,” that absurdity would fall as far below the one produced by Mr. Gamble as the finite mind is below the infinite.